Kethel’s is a byword for spicy fried chicken

Hotel Rahamaniya, which is more than 70 years old, is the home of Kethel’s fried chicken

Reach the place by early noon to be assured of a table in the tiny eatery that can seat about 20 people on five long tables and benches. Within no time, a clean, eco-friendly tender green banana leaf is placed on the table. The menu is painted on the wall: the choice is limited to soft phulkas (called chappathis here), ghee rice, fried chicken and fresh lemonade.

A plate of curry and a fresh lemonade reach the table first. Then comes cut onion and green chilli in curd. A generous spoonful of lime pickle, made that morning, is put on the leaf followed by soft chappathis or steaming ghee rice spiced with cardamom, cloves and bay leaves. Savour the lime pickle bursting with the flavours of garlic, green chilli and lemon. Finally, from an aluminium container Siddique carefuly selects about seven to eight pieces of the freshly fried chicken and serves it with the reddish brown fried marinade. Spicy and piping hot it may be, but that will not deter you from biting into it.

The fried chicken, known as Kethel’s chicken, is the piece-de-resistance, which has brought the who-is-who of Kerala, to this place. Only spring chicken weighing about 450 gm, is used and almost 200 kg of chicken is sold on any day at the tiny restaurant.

Sourced from Namakkal in Tamil Nadu, the chicken is prepared and marinated at Rahamaniya. The legs, wings and the meaty pieces are used for the fry and the rest is turned into a curry that is served with the phulka and the rice.

M Maheen, who runs Kethel’s now, says it was his idea to stick to spring chicken. Recalls Maheen: “My father, Muhammed Abdul Khader , a resident of Poovar, used to come to Putharikandam Maidanam to sell tea to the huge crowds that used to throng the Maidanam to listen to leaders fighting for an independent India. It was the early forties and the heat was on the British to quit India. From morning to evening my father used to sell them tea he carried in a kettle.”

He became known as as ‘Kettle Sayipuu’ (sayippu was a colloquial word used to refer to Muslims, a corruption of the Hindi ‘Sahib’). Over the years, the ‘Kettle’ became colloquiliased to Kethel’s.

“In 1949, he started a restaurant in Chala that used to sell dosa, idiyappam, appam, puttu and so on with mutton curry. But by the eighties, we stopped the mutton. Even when the best of mutton was served, people would wonder if it was some other meat,” says Maheen.